Debbie Porteous

All frontline police response cars will have special lockable containers fitted and 61% will carry firearms permanently by July next year.

Southern police recorded the second-biggest drop in recorded crime in the country in the past financial year, with offending falling to its lowest level in 15 years.

A former Dunedin man who had become a prominent Perth rugby player has died in Bali after he was found unconscious in his hotel room.

A study of New Zealand universities and polytechnics has revealed that the University of Otago is one of only two that do not collate records on how many cases of sexual harassment and sexual assault are reported on campus.

Police are investigating two assaults in central Dunedin early yesterday.

Newlyweds Zara Phillips and Mike Tindall were reunited in Dunedin last night, just hours after Tindall faced media for the first time since his notorious night out in Queenstown.

Zara Phillips has arrived in Dunedin.

He deals with bodies up close for a living, but the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake was like nothing he had experienced before, says a Dunedin police forensic photographer, whose pictures are included in a new book of photographs by police photographers in the weeks following the quake.

Police are seeking information about the whereabouts of a 15-year-old Timaru girl they believe might be in Dunedin or Oamaru.

Two men were taken to hospital after they were burnt when a probe they were using struck an underground high-voltage power cable in Dunedin yesterday.

Boy racers tear around southern Dunedin at the weekends, causing noise, spreading litter and verbally abusing people, moteliers say - and they want it to end.

Several Dunedin and Mosgiel properties and vehicles are included in the around $48 million in cash and assets - including lifestyle blocks and orchards - that have been seized by the police under new legislation.

Not checking properly, poor handling of vehicles and poor judgement were the most common factors in crashes where people were killed or injured on Otago roads last year.

They might not have woken up "all that fresh" yesterday morning, but that did not stop Australian rugby fans Rowan and Brett Bates busting a gut to prove something on Baldwin St.

A dedication to community service runs strong in the Third family, from Dunedin. So strong in fact that all four of them, teenagers included, are sacrificing watching rugby to work for St John in Dunedin during the Rugby World Cup.